Why Share Your Data?

Data sharing benefits the researcher, research sponsors, data repositories, the scientific community, and the public. It encourages more connection and collaboration between scientists, and better science leads to better decisionmaking.

Preparation

Key Points

Data sharing benefits

Incentivizes researchers to produce and ensure higher quality data for sharing with peers, the scientific community, and the public

Enables research sponsors to promote and inspire research within a field

Encourages collaboration among researchers to share resources, acquire more data, and produce new findings

Assists the production of more meta-analyses, which address big picture topics

Reduces redundancy of data production in scientific research, which saves investment dollars and time

Helps to better inform planning and policy

Data sharing concerns

Inappropriate use of the shared data

Security concerns over the handling of sensitive or confidential data

Lack of acknowledgement or citation for the shared data

Loss of data results from others, giving competitive advantage over research dollars

Data sharing is typically encouraged within the scientific community but it requires a great deal of effort, resources, and collaboration. Preparing data to be shared takes time and careful documentation of the research process and the data results. Nevertheless, data sharing has important long- and short-term benefits for the researcher, the research sponsor, the data repository, the scientific community, and the public.

Synergy

There are inherent benefits of data sharing for the researcher and research sponsor. Making the data available to their peers and the public incentivizes researchers to better manage their data and ensure their data are of high quality. Research sponsors can benefit from shared data by stimulating interest and mobilizing continued research within their scientific field. Thus, data sharing can help raise recognition and prominence for both the researcher and the research sponsor.

Collaboration

Data sharing encourages more connection and collaboration between researchers, which can result in important new findings within the field. In a time of reduced monetary investment for science and research, data sharing is more efficient because it allows researchers to share resources.

Data sharing allows researchers to build upon the work of others rather than repeat already existing research. Sharing data also enables researchers to perform meta-analyses on the current research topic. Meta-analyses are important for gathering larger trends over a wider regional or topic area. Therefore data sharing ensures the continued production of these types of analyses.

Better Science & Decisionmaking

Sharing data increases data circulation and use within the scientific community by encouraging better transparency, enabling reproducibility of results, and informing the larger scientific community. This, in turn, can greatly benefit the public as better and more widely disseminated information can lead to informed decisionmaking for environmental planning and policy.

Concerns & Considerations

Despite the many benefits gained from data sharing, there are important considerations that researchers must be aware of when sharing their data. There are concerns that others will use the data inappropriately or out of context from the original purpose of the research. Additionally, data may have sensitive information, and apprehensions about maintaining confidentiality are reasonable.

Lastly, researchers may also be uneasy about the prospect of not receiving acknowledgement by others who use their data, or that others will use their data to gain a competitive advantage. While these are valid concerns, often maintaining good data sharing practices and writing comprehensive metadata can largely address many of these issues.

Best Practices

Documentation: Describe the data content and process thoroughly.

Good, clear documentation will make it easier for others to see your data, understand its content, and encourage collaboration.